AP High Court transfers petitions on JEE to Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed all petitions relating to admissions in Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), by transferring them to its bench. It is pending in the Andhra Pradesh High Court.

"The transfer petition is allowed," a bench comprising Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi said. The petition was filed by the organising chairman of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) (advanced) 2013, IIT-Delhi, seeking that all petitions pending in the Andhra Pradesh High Court on admissions to IIT be shifted to the apex court.

An advocate associated with the matter said that there are more petitions pending in other High Courts, and applications would be filed for their transfer as well, in the Apex court.

Earlier on July 12, the apex court had stayed all proceedings related to admissions in IIT in the Andhra Pradesh High Court, which had directed the premier institute not to fill four seats which were offered to students from the state, but were denied on the ground of poor percentile.

A bench comprising of justices K S Radhakrishnan and Pinaki Chandra Ghose, had issued notices and sought response from those candidates on whose petition the High Court had passed the order on July 8.

However, on July 11, another bench of justices H L Dattu and Dipak Misra, had refused to pass interim order on a plea challenging the policy for deciding the merit list of students for admissio, in government-funded engineering colleges, based on class 12th board marks and JEE.

It had agreed to hear the plea of parents of engineering aspirants, who challenged the new "normalisation" policy.

The bench had said it would hear the petition on merit only after being satisfied that the education policy violates fundamental rights of students.

From this year on, students would be selected based on their performance in the JEE and the marks they got in class 12th board exams. 60 per cent weightage would be given to marks obtained in JEE and 40 per cent to the board exam results.